What we do

You think that all librarians do is stamp out books and tidy shelves? Think again… Click on one of the links below to read about all the different projects that school librarians are involved in around the UK.

Reading and Literacy

One important area for us is Reading and Literacy development – not only do we help students find a great book to read but many of us also support our students with wider literacy: reading, writing, speaking and listening. We organise book and reading events where the whole schooltakes part, Book Weeks and author visits. Another important aspect is shadowing book awards, such as prestigious Carnegie and Greenaway medals. One school even shadows the Booker prize with their sixth form A Level English pupils.

Primary School Libraries

Primary school libraries give students an important start in life – supporting reading and the development of early research skills.

Technologies and Virtual School Libraries

Very often, librarians are at the leading edge of technology development in their schools. From the early days when the first computers came into school, colleagues have embraced change and have supported teachers and students in using technology to enhance teaching and learning. We are now developing virtual libraries that are open 24/7 for our school communities! Other librarians work on online collaborative projects with teaching staff and pupils. Librarians often have presentations which they share in school and more widely, and you can see some of them here.

Transition and Links with other Sectors

School librarians are also involved with helping students during the Transition from Primary to Secondary Educationand also with their move on to Further and Higher Education – we can really make a difference here! One colleague is also making a difference by inviting pre-school children into her library, in a great new initiative. It is also important that we encourage students to use their local Public Libraries and a lot of work goes on in this area. School librarians in secondary schools do a lot of work with primary schools, who often do not have a librarian of their own. Projects with primaries range from allowing primary school pupils to borrow books as a class, helping with projects, arranging author visits, and more integrated curriuculum work. Some schools have even devised dedicated Book Awards to include their primary partners. We also have an account by one school librarian on what it is like to be a judgeof one of the major teenage book prizes.

Special Projects

Some exciting special projects and events also take place, such as Write Path, a fantastic example of international collaboration! Another event is Local Book Awards, which groups of school librarians, often working with public libraries or school library services, host every year, putting lots of time and effort into enthusing pupils to choose books relevant to them. Some schools have Book Weeks, or even fortnights, dedicated to enthusing pupils about books and reading. A group of school librarians in Scotland even started up their own reading magazine – Teen Titles – which now has subscriptions all over the world!

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Best Practice

My Goodreads YA Shelf

I find it hard to rate Francis Hardinge's books. Although they are YA and about young people they seem better read by adults. The writing is wonderful but the plots are dense and convoluted. This one is no different. I really loved the b...

An okay dystopian novel. The premise was good - the death of trees bringing a world without oxygen so people have to love in domes controlled by the elite. That serves as a great environmental warning. But the plot is thin and the charac...

This book held me spellbound from start to finish. It is a ghost story set in the Arctic, but very much in the way of Henry James (The Turn of the Screw). Five young men in 1932 set out to spend a year in a remote part of Iceland making ...

This is the second book in the Railhead series, and one I had been waiting for. Zen and Nova have travelled into the the new gate they made into the unknown. What they find there is not nothing, as the Network Empire had led them to beli...

OrangeBoy is a fantastic book, definitely one for your older YA readers though. Set in and around Brixton, it tells the story of a young black boy called Marlon whose brother had been involved in drugs, but who desperately wants not to f...